A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
‘Conspicuous Inebriation’
Update: Kash Patel has filed this morning a defamation lawsuit against the Atlantic and staff writer Sarah Fitzpatrick in federal court in D.C.
On Friday evening, The Atlantic published a devastating account of Kash Patel’s first year as FBI director.
The gist of the piece is this: “the problems with his conduct go well beyond what has been previously known, and include both conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences.”
Most of the piece focused on Patel’s alleged drinking on the job. The anecdotes were numerous … and astounding:
- “On multiple occasions in the past year, members of his security detail had difficulty waking Patel because he was seemingly intoxicated, according to information supplied to Justice Department and White House officials. A request for ‘breaching equipment’—normally used by SWAT and hostage-rescue teams to quickly gain entry into buildings—was made last year because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors, according to multiple people familiar with the request.”
- “Early in his tenure, meetings and briefings had to be rescheduled for later in the day as a result of his alcohol-fueled nights, six current and former officials and others familiar with Patel’s schedule told me.”
- “FBI officials and others in the administration have privately questioned whether alcohol played a role in the instances in which he shared inaccurate information about active law-enforcement investigations, including following the murder of Charlie Kirk.”
Patel responded to the story pre-publication by threatening to sue The Atlantic: “Print it, all false, I’ll see you in court—bring your checkbook.” Post-publication, he threatened to sue as soon as today and posted this quite memorable, though legally inaccurate, statement on X regarding defamation law: “actual malice standard is now what some would call a legal lay up.”
As has become a pattern among on-the-outs officials during Trump II, Patel tried to save his own neck by redoubling his efforts to go after Trump’s political foes during a round of appearances on the Sunday morning TV shows:
DiGenova Helms ‘Grand Conspiracy’ Case
After a bunch of rapid-fire reporting from multiple news outlets from Friday afternoon into Saturday, the shuffling of the deck chairs in the mother of all Trump vindictive prosecutions in south Florida looks like this:
- Career DOJer Maria Medetis Long is out as the lead prosecutor in the case “after she resisted pressure to quickly bring charges” against former CIA director John Brennan, CNN reports. Her boss, Miami U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones, had told DOJ “officials that charges could still be months away, sources say, which top Justice officials told him was not acceptable.”
- Former D.C. U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova, 81, who represented Trump’s 2020 campaign and Trump during the earlier Russia investigation, is now leading the “grand conspiracy” investigation, with the title of counselor to the attorney general. DiGenova starts today.
- Also assigned to the case: Christopher-James DeLorenz, a former clerk to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon during the Mar-a-Lago investigation who was transferred to south Florida from Main Justice, where he’d been an aide to then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
The south Florida case, some of which is happening in Ft. Pierce, where Cannon is the only judge, is supposedly pursuing a grand-unifying conspiracy theory that the federal government was out to get Trump across multiple investigations that spanned nearly a decade.
Trump DOJ Watch
- In a letter last week signed by Civil Rights Division chief Harmeet Dhillon, the Trump DOJ demanded that Detroit-area ballots from the 2024 federal election be turned over, escalating its bogus scrutiny of spurious election fraud claims, which judges continue to reject en masse.
- HuffPo: “As legal claims against the Trump administration stack up, several federal lawyers defending the U.S. government — and its repeated failures to follow court orders — have regularly fallen back on the same argument: They simply have no idea what’s going on.”
- WSJ: In a letter that uses highly politicized language, the Trump DOJ is refusing to cooperate with the French investigation into Elon Musk’s X.
Todd Blanche Auditions for AG Post
Former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman: “In Todd Blanche’s three weeks as Acting AG, he has taken screws that seemed fully turned and tightened them another notch. His initial moves suggest that, hard as it is to conceive, he will be even more vicious, more slavish toward Trump, and more willing to jettison the public interest and the rule of law than was his consummately servile predecessor.”
Extraordinary Glimpse Inside SCOTUS
In a well-packaged blockbuster, the NYT obtained a tranche of internal Supreme Court memos from the 2016 case that ushered in the shadow docket as we know it today:
- The Inside Story of Five Days That Remade the Supreme Court
- VIDEO: The Origins of the Supreme Court’s Shadow Docket
- A Breakdown of Five Days of Secret Supreme Court Memos
- Takeaways From the Supreme Court’s Shadow Papers
- Read the Supreme Court’s Shadow Papers
Shadow docket expert Steve Vladeck has a very accessible column this morning on the upshot of the NYT’s remarkable reporting.
No SCOTUS Retirements This Year
Contrary to all the speculation, Justice Samuel Alito doesn’t plan to retire this year, Fox News reports. Justice Clarence Thomas isn’t going anywhere either, according to CBS News’ Jan Crawford.
Sorry, Aileen Cannon, Neomi Rao, James Ho, et al.
Good Read
Madiba K. Dennie: Neomi Rao Understands What It Means to Be a Trump Judge
Latest From the Middle East …
- After declaring on Friday that the Strait of Hormuz was open to navigation, Iran quickly moved to shut it down again on Saturday until, it said, the United States lifts its blockade of Iranian ports. Two India-flagged ships were fired on after the new Iranian announcement and forced to turn around.
- On Sunday, the U.S. Navy disabled then boarded an Iranian-flagged cargo ship that allegedly tried to run the U.S. blockade.
- Vice President J.D. Vance is leading the U.S. delegation in expected talks this week with Iran in Pakistan, though Iran is making noises about not participating following the weekend’s events in the Strait of Hormuz.
Thread of the Day
A recap of the unusual maneuvering over FISA Section 702 late last week on the Hill:
Boat Strike Campaign Death Toll: 180
Three people were killed Sunday in the Caribbean Sea in the 52nd lawless U.S. strike against suspected drug-smuggling boats, bringing the campaign’s death toll to at least 180 people.
Mass Deportation Watch
- Turkish national Rumeysa Ozturk, the pro-Palestinian Tufts University student whose detention by masked federal agents for her political views was caught on camera, completed her Ph.D. in February and returned home to Turkey as part of a settlement agreement with the Trump administration.
- Marcy Wheeler: Minnesota Still Cleaning Up after Pam Bondi’s Trophy Stunt
- Politico: They’ve been detained by ICE and ordered deported. Judges are releasing them from custody.
The Corruption: Bogus Settlements
A new court filing confirmed that — how else to put it? — the Trump administration is in settlement talks with President Trump and his family about their $10 billion lawsuit over the leak of their tax information to news organizations.
In related news: Lawfare obtained via a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit a copy of the $1.25 million settlement agreement between the Trump administration and former Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn to settle his bogus malicious prosecution claims.
The Corruption: Trump Library Edition
As The New Republic’s Greg Sargent reports, Democrats have been chasing down what happened to the corporate donations to Trump’s presidential library that were part of corrupt lawsuit settlement agreements with him — especially since the fund created to receive donations was dissolved last year.
ABC, Paramount, Meta, and X have now all confirmed they made the settlement payments, but it’s not clear where the monies ended up going.
“Not one of these companies can say with any clarity where their multi-million-dollar donations to Donald Trump’s library slush fund are, or where they will go,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) told TNR.
Appeals Court Lets Ballroom Continue
The D.C. Circuit is playing with fire by allowing construction of President Trump’s vanity ballroom to continue until at least June while it hears his appeal of a lower court order halting the project. The administrative stay sets the stage for Trump to rush construction along so that he can present courts with a fait accompli they’ll be more reluctant to order torn down. This was the exact scenario U.S. District Judge Richard Leon of D.C. warned the administration about in the very first hearing in the case, but the panel of Judges Patricia Millett (Obama), Neomi Rao (Trump), and Brad Garcia (Biden) are opening the barn door at least until oral arguments on June 5.
Headline of the Day
I didn’t expect to see this headline in my lifetime: “Germany Is Reinventing Itself as a Weapons Factory.”
Thanks, President Trump.
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(Scott MacFarlane)
Anxiously awaiting the details of the discovery process!!! Facts and testimony are facts and testimony!!
Ty @squirreltown
Can The Atlantic sue Patel for damaging their reputation?